A Legacy of Birds
by moonswirl
Summary: Prelude #17 to ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH, coming in July. (See author's note inside) An AU story set across the Arrowverse. In this installment: Alexandra Danvers, born to a life chosen for her, went seeking her own path after suffering a great loss.


_**A/N:** I was meant to start writing and posting these back in January, however life happened, and progress didn't happen, so now here I am, a little over two months late but finally kicking things off! This coming July, as I've done for the past two summers, I'll be leading a 100-day countdown story set across the Arrowverse (featuring Supergirl, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow). I decided to do things a little differently this year. For one thing, the entire 100 days will be a single story spread over 100 days, one chapter to every day. And for another, the more planning I did, I saw the possibility and the need to lay in some ground work in the form of preludes._

 _Twenty-four prelude one-shot stories, six each to the four series (again, it was meant so that each month from January to June would have one of each show, but now… yeah ;)), posted every 5 (or 6) days._

 _The story this will all be leading to, **Once More Unto the Breach** , is an alternate universe story (not another Earth, ha :D), which will soon become evident enough. It's very possible you do not watch all four of the shows, but I highly encourage you to seek out the other preludes, as they will help to fill in this world I'm very excited to share with you guys!_

 _Alright, enough chit chat, let's go! If you have any questions, send them my way and I'll be happy to answer them!_

* * *

 **A LEGACY OF BIRDS  
** _Prelude to_ _ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH  
_ (17 of 24)

 **Location:**  
 **BREACH EARTH, HAVEN QUARTER**  
 _ **(ARGUS designation)**_

She did not remember a time where her life was not in the public eye. Had it been her choice, she might have seen the whole situation differently, but then it had not been her choice, had it? No. She had no other option left to her but to be who she was. Alexandra Danvers, daughter to Jeremiah and Eliza, had been born into the greatly scrutinized world of her family and the fortune they had built through her father's company, Danvers Consolidated. The life she had been afforded through all this was undoubtedly one of comfort. Difficulties were of another kind where her family was concerned, whether or not anyone outside their little world would have seen them as difficulties at all. Looking back on those times, she could only cringe at some of her memories, at the behavior she had sometimes exhibited. She might have passed the blame on the innocence of youth, but that only accounted for part of it, didn't it? And the rest… the rest was what it was.

She was to be groomed to follow in her father's footsteps, which to him and her mother was something she was apparently supposed to be honored by, anxious to see it through. To her? To her it was yet one more box they were trying to fit her into, like the rest of her life. Thank goodness for her little sister though… Thank goodness for Kara… From the day she'd been born, her sister had made her life better, made parts of their family life she couldn't stand just that much better.

Her sister had never seemed to carry their family name like something of a burden, a weight. No, she would just go on through life like she had some kind of secret key to the world, to let her see nothing but the good, the potential. They would be forced to go to some boring party because their parents would say they had to, and while Alexandra would feel like there was nothing better for her to do than to sit in a corner and wait for it to be over, Kara… Kara would just flit about the place, discovering which servers carried anything good, or she would find a painting or a sculpture and become enraptured by it. And if there was music, oh… she would dance and dance to her heart's content. And all this she would do with the single stipulation that her big sister be right there to enjoy it with her. And she would enjoy it. Because that was the way it worked, with Kara for a sister.

It was at one of these parties that their favorite and longest running game had its start. And it was all thanks to a very large photograph, hanging at the top of a long stairway in the home of some friends of their parents'. They had been eight and six at the time, and, hearing the gasp of wonder out of her little sister just before feeling her hand being grasped, she knew they were about to take off on an adventure. Up, up, up the stairs the two of them had dashed, until they reached the top and had to stop at a velvet rope, asking that guests didn't go beyond this point. But that was alright. They could look at the image just as easily from this point.

The photograph showed a pair of birds in black and white. Surely they would have been in color before the image had been captured, but all they saw here was a black bird, and a white bird, both in flight. Kara had declared the littler one, the black one, to be the little sister bird, with the larger, white bird as the big sister bird. That was another thing she did. Anything that came in pairs, one of them would have to be her, and the other would have to be Alexandra. _She_ stared at the picture for a while, finally declaring that she thought they might be canaries.

There was no saying why this pairing stayed with them, but it did. Kara was fascinated by the birds, it was clear. She would draw them, one littler black one, one greater white one. And when they'd be out and about, if she saw birds in flight, she would stare at them with a curious smile, asking if any of them were canaries. Alexandra had never considered herself all that knowledgeable about birds, but for her sister's sake she had researched enough to be able to say whether the birds Kara saw were canaries or not. And it didn't stop there. Soon they would be pretending that they _were_ birds. Nothing dangerous, neither of them attempting to leap and take flight, but they would work around that, as children would. The game had stayed with them for a good three or four years, and even when they didn't really play the birds anymore, there was always this secret between them, like the canaries were secret identities they shared, with each other and no one else.

And then, when she had been sixteen years old, Alexandra's whole world had been turned on its head. In one fell swoop she had lost her father… and her little sister.

She could never forget that day, for however much she'd tried. It was summer, and she had been out with some friends. She should have been at home, with Kara, maybe even brought her along, but she'd just… Well, she'd been sixteen and, again, had been prone to certain behaviors she now regretted. One of those had been to listen to one of her friends at the time, when the girl had said she didn't need to drag her baby sister around everywhere. So she'd left her behind. And when she'd come back home, a great day under her belt and a small souvenir she'd brought back as something of a peace offering, she'd been greeted by the sight of police cars on the path leading up to the mansion. It had knocked the breath from her and still she'd managed to start running.

She hadn't stopped until she'd found her mother sitting there, officers standing or sitting around her. She was crying, sobbing, and at once Alexandra had known. She didn't want to believe it, but she knew. They were dead… Oh, they were dead… Her father… Kara… _Kara…_ She'd gasped, and her mother had looked up, seen her there, and she had just gotten up, for this one moment feeling the ability to walk again, only so far as it was required to get her to her elder daughter and wrap her arms around her.

In the days that had followed, she had been told _some_ things, though it would never feel like enough. All she would be told was that they were dead. If she ever asked what had happened to them, to cause their deaths, her mother wouldn't say, leaving Alexandra to know without being told that it was simply too terrible to say.

They'd had the funeral, though _that_ day was much more a blur than the day she'd found out they'd died. She remembered sitting on a wooden chair next to her mother, staring at the two coffins sitting side by side, ready to be lowered into the ground. Never would it be said that she didn't ache and grieve for her father, because she did. She might have had certain issues with the world they lived in and how he and her mother had practically decided who she'd be before she was even born, but he was her father, and she had loved him very much. But Kara… She'd been too young. It was too soon. She was so bright and happy, so hopeful… She deserved a life, a good, long life, filled with discovery, with wonder. The world deserved to know the woman she would have grown into. And now they wouldn't, and _she_ … she wouldn't have her partner in crime anymore, and she was simply devastated.

The year that had followed, her mother had done everything in her power to give Alexandra the space to heal, and whether she'd been successful in this or not, she was thankful. However, when that year had passed and it became clear that the old plans for her future, slightly altered as they were, remained on the table. Now with her father gone, Alexandra would be expected to step up, to become involved and start to forge her place in the company.

The day she graduated high school, she packed her bags and left home. She wouldn't return until four years later.

In that time, she had not once spoken to her mother, to anyone from home. And while a part of her had felt cruel, abandoning her mother to herself, after losing the rest of their family, Alexandra had known in her heart that it was the right choice, the only choice. Kara may not have been able to spread her wings, but _she_ would, for the both of them.

When she had returned, as potentially horrible as that reunion might end up being, the first person Alexandra had gone to see was her mother. There really was no one else she felt the need to reconnect with after those years away, and that fact was not without its pains. How would her mother react? Refuse to see her? Shout at her? Slap her?

She had done none of those things, though their reunion hadn't been the warmest. Eliza Danvers had found herself face to face with her elder daughter for the first time in four years, and her reaction had felt nearer to two people seeing each other after having last seen each other all of days before. There was no startled surprise, no shocked silence. Her mother was ignoring the issue as a whole, and that felt almost worse. Alexandra understood how upset her mother was, and now she would just have to suffer the knowledge of it without feeling its blow. Her mother had been hardened by those years apart, and there was nothing to be done for it except to go on. Her mother didn't ask her where she'd been, didn't ask her what she'd done, and Alexandra never had to lie to her.

At the very least, she never tried to get her to join the company anymore. Her mother had been left to step into the post in time, and she must have devoted all of her energies into it. Now, there was no need to make her daughter do anything she clearly didn't want to do. It still felt more spiteful than anything else.

Alexandra, returned to the city she'd called home and with no responsibilities to her name, had been left to get to know the place again, get to know what it had become in her absence. And she had to do it all with the constant reminder of her sister's short life, seeing things and places she had loved, which could at times catch her off guard, fill her with that pain of loss, terrible and sharp, but overall… filled her with a purpose.

It would be easy to look at her, following her return, and be distracted by the fact that she was four years older than she'd been when she'd last walked these streets, enough that one wouldn't see the changes beneath the surface. They might have seen a weight in her stance, an awareness of her surroundings, a quickness of reflexes… if she let them see. She was very good at letting them see only what she would have them see.

For six months after her return, she had done her best to go about and recreate her life… create her life, really. There were no pieces to reassemble, were there? She had stopped being who she'd used to be the day her father and her sister had died, and since then… Since then, she had been growing, evolving, into the person she was when she'd gone back home. And if she needed any convincing, it came on the night when she came to the rescue of a strange young woman. She hadn't known about anything like breaches and another Earth when she'd run off four years before, but she knew now, and she'd recognized the girl for what she was almost as soon as she'd seen her. She was so disoriented, so distraught, and she'd walked right into the path of danger, in this case a trio of men looking to the flighty girl as someone to corner.

They never saw her coming, nor did they see her pull something from inside her jacket, until with one swift motion it expanded into a long metal staff, and in that same motion she brought that staff into action, making quick work of disabling the trio, before they so much as saw her face. The only one who saw her face was the breacher girl, and with a nod of the head Alexandra had given her all the signal she needed to take off running, to safety, one could only hope.

That same night she had gone to the cemetery, to visit her father and her sister, laying flowers on both their graves before kneeling at Kara's stone. To her she told everything, told her about the strange, aimless journey which had brought her to a place… even stranger than anything she could have imagined. She told her about the people she'd met there, about how they had come to train her. And she told her about how she'd carried her memory with her all along. When she had been brought to adopt a guise, the one she'd chosen was the very same one Kara had assigned to her all those years ago. She had become the White Canary.

But she'd put her aside again, after she'd come home. She'd put her aside, because it felt like she should, like it was time to return and start her life again, but now… Tonight, helping that girl… Nothing had felt quite as right in a long time, and when she'd started to understand it, the first thing she'd wanted to do was to go and tell her sister… Six years, her sister had been gone, and there were still times where she'd forget, in her excitement to share something with her, that she was gone. But here… here was as close as she would get, and after telling her gravestone about her years away, about saving the girl… and now that she'd heard herself say it, she knew what she needed to do, knew what she had wanted to do before she'd ever set the flowers before her sister's grave.

She needed to make something of herself. She had left this city, afraid that the weight of her grief would bow her head for her and force her into the life she had always known wasn't made for her. She had found strength in herself while she'd been away, in more ways than one, but even so, after a while she had just felt like she'd gone as far as she could go, and she needed to go home. And now… now she knew what for.

She had lost her sister, but she had carried her in her heart, in her thoughts, and in a name. And when she thought about what Kara would have made of herself, if she'd only been allowed to grow to adulthood, Alexandra knew… She would have been a force for good in the world, she would have helped people. So that was what Alexandra wanted to do, in her honor, and with the skills she had developed in her time away.

It had now been six years since that night in the cemetery, the night she had decided to bring the White Canary to her city, to allow her to carry on the legacy of two girls, mesmerized before a photograph so long ago, of one gone and the other standing up for those who couldn't do it for themselves. She helped the people of her Earth, from whatever quarter they may have come, as well as those from the Main Earth, when she knew they needed it. The costume, the name… the mask… they had kept her identity a secret. There was a part of her who would have been ready and willing to face the world without the mask, but… This had always been about Kara, and honoring her memory, and she couldn't do that if her identity being known meant that people would prevent her going forward.

And then a year ago… a year ago, she had found out something, a secret her mother had kept from her for over a decade. She found out that the coffin they'd buried, that was to hold her little sister, was empty, because they had never found her body. And Alexandra only ever found out about this after confronting her mother… after Kara's return.

THE END

* * *

 _Check out the next prelude, coming May 30th!_


End file.
